Everything works eventually if you practice long enough, as has been suggested in many posts. Bee and Bob R have an idea - the long thumbnail - that worked really well for the brilliant old time mandolin player Kenny Hall. I find that something about either the size of the pick - the Golden Gate or Dawg style stiff-enough-to-stop-a-bullet kind - or the magic of looking for a solution for fifty-odd years and finally learning to relax made the search complete. However, it might be that my spit has gotten stickier in my sixties. Along the way I found that snitching a bit of the fiddle players resin helped, and wearing a Canadian elastoplast bandaid on thumb or forefinger til RIGHT before playing may have helped the relaxation learning process.